Quebec multimedia industry suggests $100-million e-learning package

Quebec’s primary IT industry association has recommended the province stay at the forefront of interactive education with a comprehensive $100-million, five-year package of government financing. In a submission to Quebec’s education minister, the Alliance NumériQC says the provincial government must hammer home the message that interactive learning will play a key role in future education and training, and back up its commitment with dollars for content creation, training, and acquisition. The group is hopeful the request will be well received by the ministry, which is preparing a comprehensive policy on education and technology slated for release this fall. Gilles Bertrand, the Alliance’s VP of business development, says the province runs the risk of falling behind other provinces without a comprehensive plan for online learning and could find itself importing even more out-of-province content than it already does. He says the government must implement policies similar to those for textbook publishers (in which Quebec has a successful industry). "Right now, there’s no money ," he tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. Bertrand notes that schools are buying off-the-shelf, non-local content and breaking copyright rules by making multiple copies across their institutions to try to keep up with students’ needs. Not only does the practice break intellectual property laws but it reduces support for Quebec content companies struggling to stay afloat.In response, the Alliance has proposed a five-year plan to "prime the pump" for the creation of an independent content creation sector that would eventually be free of the need for government funds. Its sliding scale proposal for $20 million per year in funding includes $16 million earmarked for content creation in the first year, and $12, $8, $4 and $2 million in the subsequent years. Acquisition of content by schools would be funded by $2 million in the first year, and $6, $8, $12 and $14 million in the subsequent years. Training and utilization budgets would grow from $2 million in the first and second years to $4 million in each of the next three years. "We won’t ask for any more. After five years, there should be a good market and we wouldn’t need the support of the minister," Bertrand says. "If we don’t support our industry, they will leave," he says. "Ten years ago there were 43 enterprises in Quebec who were doing some kind of content. Now, there’s only 15. If the government doesn’t answer and say, ‘we need you, we need this type of industry because in two, three, four years from now we will need a lot of content’ – if it doesn’t do a thing, there are only going to be five of those firms ." Though the government isn’t currently funding the interactive learning content sector to the Alliance’s satisfaction (Bertrand says that Quebec’s spending on content is $400,000 a year – less than what Alberta buys from Quebec), the signs are still promising that it will respond with significant measures. Quebec is 14 months or so away from linking every school in the province to a fibre backbone, and the Parti Québécois government has already created a leading 1:6 ratio of students to computers. Further, Premier Bernard Landry has a long history, dating back to his days as finance minister, of supporting the multimedia industry in the province. Now that schools have been wired, Bertrand says the next logical step is to ensure a government commitment to content – something that may seem an obvious next step, but which the Alliance is keen to have written down in any new policy. Once interactive learning is made a matter of policy, he says the next step, in keeping with the Alliance’s proposal, is to ensure that rules are set up mandating a certain level of purchasing of content from Quebec companies, along with the funds to do so.

Quebec multimedia industry suggests $100-million e-learning package

Broadcast | April 19, 2002

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